A Different Kind of Schooling
by Jaing
Summary: When a massive explosion in the future sends a warrior back in time, Harry has a vision of it. When they finally meet, his new friend reveals the world of magic, and lets Harry in on a secret - only he can change the future. And they will train him. WIP
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I own nothing but my OCs and plot. Everything else goes to the Rowling-meister.

**Title: A Different Kind of Schooling**

**Rating: T**

**Pairings:** None foreseen, other than what is obvious

**Author:** Jaing

**Beta: **Zaera! (cousin)

Contains time-travel, non-canon elements, Magitech™, and others.

So, folks, while you're waiting on my new chapter of Harry Potter and the Dawn of Honor, I thought I'd post up this quick, unrelated story that had promise in my head. I want to know your opinions, to see if I should go on with it. Oh, and I'm now working with my cousin Z as my beta reader.

_**Surrey, United Kingdom, 1991**_

Ten-year-old Harry Potter was sleeping on his cot in the cupboard under the stairs on a starry night in mid-June, mere days before his eleventh birthday. He never expected anything in the way of a birthday present, minus the possible socks or his whale of a cousin's old clothing. He shared his space with a veritable horde of spiders and other small insects that had come to be his only "friends". He thought that this year would be like any other, but what he did not know was that this was the year something rather special would happen - a letter would arrive from a school, a place of magic. A place called "Hogwarts".

Or, rather, that was what was supposed to happen.

What did happen, was another matter entirely.

_**Leipzig, Germany, 2030**_

Guardian Kayleigh Sommers wiped sweat from her brow, panting in exhaustion. Her grip on her rifle tightened momentarily, before she sat it on the ground, peering over the top of her improvised barricade. Dark shapes moved in the near distance, shuffling back and forth, getting ready once again to assail her position. She couldn't hold and she knew it, knew it was impossible. She and her squadmate Julius were all that remained of the last Light Brigade forces in Germany - in fact, the world. Colonel Potter had told them this was coming, that they should prepare.

Prepare they did. Hermione Potter sweated and toiled with her people,sweating and bleeding with the rest of them to turn their training complex into a fortress. Gun emplacements were dug, bunkers were made, earthworks completed. Small magical factories churned out munitions and medicines as fast as their overworked replication apparati could handle.

It still wasn't enough. The first wave of Death Eaters and their muggle counterparts broke against an impenetrable wall of fire, as did the second, but by the third munitions for the heavy weapons were running out, and positions started to fall. By the fourth, nothing remained of the outer walls and defenses but maimed bodies and twisted rubble. Hermione herself had fallen among a dozen enemies, her knife and wand flashing useless vengeance as she went under. Her body had been retrieved by Kayleigh herself, and it was portkeyed to the Citadel in Antarctica.

Now Kayleigh and Julius had but one, final mission: Hold long enough to draw the enemy forces in, and detonate the demolition charge buried under the base. Kayleigh was no fan of martyrdom - as a matter of fact, she was completely terrified of dying - but a stubborn sense of duty propelled her forward.

"I think it's time." Julius said to her, face covered in soot and ashes and grime. She shared a look with him, before nodding and setting a magical tripwire and explosive charge next to the barricade. She and Julius took deep breaths, before sprinting towards the engineering room door in an explosion of movement that drew spell fire from the Death Eaters behind. Julius grunted as a Reductor curse slammed into his armor from behind, and Kayleigh let out a gasp of pain as a cutting curse opened a gash on her thigh. Still, they ran on, diving through the door and bolting it behind them.

Gasping for breath, they limped together over the dust on the floor and went to an engineering station. Their keys flew over the keyboards, tapping in codes. The computer digested the input, before blinking an Affirmative on the screens before them. The timer set for three minutes.

Kayleigh hugged Julius fiercely."It's done." she whispered. He held her tightly to him,and they were both quiet for near three minutes, listening to the sounds of curses rebounding off their door with ever-increasingly loud clangs, scared to death but glad that if they had to go, they at least had each other for company when they talked to Gabriel.

As the final five seconds blinked on the screen, the door burst asunder, and Death Eaters slammed in, only to be hurled back on a storm of spells. "Long Live the Light Brigade!" Kayleigh and Julius shouted as the counter reached zero.

For miles upon miles around, people who weren't blinded by the initial blast gazed in shock and awe upon the explosion, which topped 60 megatons. It wasn't nuclear, and there was no fallout, but the devastation was far, far more total.

Almost. Physical essence ripped away by the blast, a soul fought to regain form as it was flung through space and time...

**_Somewhere in Wales, United Kingdom, 1991_**

Alice Brighton squinted her eyes at a flash just inside the woods near her house, and would have gone to see it if it weren't for the sudden wail of her newborn. Later, she would remember, but by then it wouldn't matter. But had she checked, she would have found a black-red haired someone gasping for breath in the undergrowth.

The figure stood on shaky new legs, searching its' surroundings, before harnessing its magic and vanishing from sight.

**_Surrey, UK -_**

Harry looked through the lense of his dreams upon a very strange scene. Black-robed figures brandishing sticks flowed down a hallway, shooting streams of colored light from the tips of their sticks against a very heavy looking door. When the door finally gave way, Harry followed the figures into a room, watching in muted horror as they were cut down by two armored figures, a man and a woman, firing stubby weapons. Then, a flash of light, and he was miles away, watching an immense mushroom cloud ascend like some malevolent plant miles and miles above the earth.

Harry woke up, sweating, very confused. What was that? he thought. His dreams, when he had them, were never this... real. What was more, he felt a faint tug on his mind, but he couldn't tell which direction. The dream was disturbing. _It's just a dream, Harry_ , he thought. _You were just dreaming_.

The words sounded false to his own mind.

Minutes later, he fell back to an uneasy sleep, dreaming of nothing.

_**The Ministry, London -**_

Auror Alastor Moody studied a blaringly noisy silver instrument on his desk, watching the view-panel flash hundreds of colors before settling at black, and giving him a location. His raised eyebrow showed enough of his opinion to his peers, before he growled and stumped off to the nearest Apparition point. He grumbled the whole way about stupid people time-travelling without knowing what they were doing, and was unhappy, to say the least, to have the job of turning them around. It wasn't like he'd meant to kick Fudge in the ass... actually, he hadn't meant to leave any evidence. That's what got him in trouble. So now he was the Time-Travel Watcher.

When he reached the Apparition point, he focused on being outside a small town in Wales. And, moments later, he was.

**_A\N: This is a plot bunny that literally hit me in the middle of the night. Can someone give a review? Should I write more?_**


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: I own nothing but my OCs and plot. Everything else goes to the Rowling-meister.

**Title: A Different Kind of Schooling**

**Rating: T**

**Pairings:** None foreseen, other than what is obvious

**Author:** Jaing

**Beta: **Zaera! (cousin)

The long awaited chapter 2! I had actually thoroughly believed I lost all the rest of the story. I just found it, and am re-writing a little. Here you are. Many apologies.

**_Surrey, United Kingdom , 1991 -_**

Harry Potter awoke, recalling his strange dream of the night before. He threw it about in his head, and convinced himself it must have been from the science-fictionshow he'd watched on the telly while the Dursleys were away the day before, taking Dudley and some of his friends out to a theme was still dark in the house, so Harry pushed open his door and padded out onto the kitchen on silent feet, setting the skillet up for making breakfast. He went to the fridge, taking out the bacon - and stealing a tiny slice of a cake that Dudley had kept in the fridge.

As he cooked breakfast, Uncle Vernon's alarm clock went off and the family gradually trickled in, Aunt Petunia first, looking as pink and horsey as ever. Next came Vernon, looking like a bear with legs and missing all but the slightest amount of neck. And finally, Harry saw Mendel at work : combine small, thin, horsey woman, and large, walrus-like man, and you get a tub of lard for a son."Where's my breakfast?" Dudley grumbled, setting down in his usual chair, making it squeak and squeal.

Harry set his plate down unceremoniously in front of him."Here you are, Dudley." he said affably, adding in his mind, _you fat git_. Uncle Vernon looked up from over the top of his paper."Don't break the plates, boy, or I'll break your arm." he says, before returning to the sports section, reading the report over the latest Manchester United game. _And you too_, thought Harry as he sat Vernon's plate before him. Aunt Petunia not making a comment but merely looking disapprovingly down her nose at him - rather a feat given that he had had a small growth spurt recently and had grown taller than she - and he refrained from adding her to the Git List as he sat her plate down, and then sat at his seat to eat his woefully small portion of the large amount of food he'd cooked.

The breakfast was unusually quiet, with none of the usual make-a-jab-at-Harry that usually went on, and for this Harry was grateful. He could actually stick around and chew his food, meaning he'd be a lot less hungry later.

**_Wales, UK -_**

A figure stole on fast feet through the undergrowth, blazing a trail through the brush along the side of a road, careful to remain unseen. Its armor glinted like stained glass, but the soft, rhythmic clinking of plate-on-plate proved it to be otherwise. A Roman-style visor fronted the full-head helmet, a faceplate separating its face from the wilderness. Short, well-trained legs pumped nearly effortlessly, eating up the miles. Very careful it was to remain un-spotted. The still sleeping countryside knew not a thing, and the figure moved through with an almost inhuman quickness, a pair of projections thrusting out from its' pack, and it leapt nearly horizontally through the air, traversing the terrain in 10 meter bounds.

All through the country side that day there were rumors of a white-silver-blue blur moving through it, moving across the ground too fast for the eye to get a track, but it looked roughly human, and further rumors involving the Government developing some sort of super soldier or perhaps even a Robocop-like cyborg in secret followed almost as fast.

**_Surrey, UK -_**

Harry went to school, the same boring routine as always setting in. Walk in, go to his first class, be ignored. Go to his second class, be ignored. Third, ignored. Lunch, ignored. Fourth hour - _hey, wait, what? _thought Harry as his science-class teacher called on him. "What is this, Mr. Potter?" said the kindly, rotund man teaching. Mr. Courvosier, Harry thought. Harry focused on the whiteboard."That's E=MC squared, sir. The equation for mass and energy." Harry said, having never been called on before. Dudley cracked his knuckles ominously behind him. "Indeed, Mr. Potter! And what, pray tell, is an application for this equation?" Mr. Courvosier inquired again."Nuclear weapons, of course." Harry knew that much. The class oohed. "Indeed again, but it is also good for a number of other things. Generating power, calculating the mass of stars, how much energy they put off... potentially even reversing the course of space and time. Time travel, as you know it. Or so say some scientists." Mr. C said.

Befuddled, Harry watched Mr. Courvosier teach the class further about that which they were studying today - radiation, fission, basically your average Year 6 science course - and wondered to himself, _why did he call on me?_ Harry never got called on in class - Dudley saw to that personally. He never got had any friends, any at all, because of his whale of a cousin. There were a few people each year, normally new to the school, who tried to befriend him - and were promptly sent home badly bruised, and sometimes they immediately were transferred away, even.

**_Wales, UK -_**

Alastor Moody sat in the corner of the village's magical inn/pub, scanning the crowd with his magical eye for the distinct magical signature that he'd tracked here from the point of the time-traveler's entrance. He'd been waiting for hours here, watching for the reappearance of that signature. His orders were to detain them, discover why they'd come, and then, possibly, to send them straight back with a stern warning about mucking with the continuum.

So far, no luck.

Alastor grunted, taking a sip from his flask, and as he looked up, there it was! The signature! It seemed to belong to a cloaked individual, prowling through the room with the gait of a panther - or a trained warrior. The way Alastor himself used to move. But his eye could not, or would not, penetrate that cloak. He stood up, with a heavy thunk, and thumped over to the individual. He raised his wand.

"Turn around, slowly, with your hands in the air." He growled."No need to start a scene."

And with that, the figure whirled, and with the Body Bind curse on his lips, Moody started moving - but never finished the wand movement before he was thrown into and through the wall of the pub. Landing with a crash on the hood of an automobile across the street, he cursed, rising - and then stopped, finding a gauntleted fist staring him in the face, with a trio of nasty looking wands at the end of it. "Don't move." came the soft voice of the person on the other end of it. Even Moody's eye has trouble piercing the darkness, leaving the only thing he saw of the person's face being a single gray-blue eye. "What year is it, Auror?"

Moody's brow quirked at the odd question."Nineteen ninety-one." The eye vanished as their head turned slightly, obviously considering something, and Moody struck kicking their chest - and was confused as his foot felt like he just kicked solid metal. The figure went down, twisted like a cat, and sprung back up within seconds, Moody rolling off the car. With a muttered curse of their own, the figure launched a solid kick which Moody blocked, only to barely miss the palm-strike screeching in at muzzle velocity colliding with his stomach. Doubled over, Moody ripped the cloak off, and had time only to glimpse both gray-blue eyes smoldering with anger, before a curse hurtled off the gauntlet without a word uttered and sent him crashing into the darkness.

**_A\N: And that's chap 2! Short, but, as the story goes along, it will get longer, trust me.  
_**


	3. Chapter 3: A Wizard?

Disclaimer: I own nothing but my OCs and plot. Everything else goes to the Rowling-meister.

**Title: A Different Kind of Schooling**

**Rating: T**

**Pairings:** None foreseen, other than what is obvious

**Author:** Jaing

**_Chapter 3: A Wizard?_**

Gray eyes surveyed the mid-sized house before them, watching from behind a Disillusionment Charm. _Is this the place? Can this really _be _where _Harry Potter _grew up? It's so... normal. Depressingly so, actually..._

The thought's owner snorted, sniggering._ Eh, silly muggles. Speaking of which... _

A large, expensive-looking car rounded the corner at a thoroughly average pace.

_Ah, a Mercedes... I think?... silver, could have picked a better color, but at least you really can't go wrong with it...  
_

The subject of attention got out of the car - a large, fat man with little neck, followed by an equally massive - _or soon to be, at any rate -_ son and a bony, lanky wife with a long, horse-like face face. And -

_Good lord, he's tiny!_

Harry Potter was unmistakable, even at this age. The unruly black hair was the deadest giveaway on the face of the known world. The Dursley patriarch lifted him by the scruff of his jacket and led him inside. "What the ruddy hell do you think you were doing boy? Removing the glass from the snake habitat! Unnatural, I tell you!"

"I didn't _do _anything!" Harry protested.

"Of course you did! Anything unnatural, and you're the cause of it, boy." Vernon sneered. They moved inside the house and shut the door, and no more could be heard.

_Brilliant. Now I'm going to _enjoy _breaking down a door for a change..._

_**Inside the Dursley House - **_

Harry sat on his cot inside the cupboard, holding his face in his hands. _How did that glass just... vanish? That's impossible! And the snake _talked _to me. Something doesn't add up... 'course, being blamed for something you didn't do _never_ adds up, now does it Harry? They blame me for every damned thing._

But he remembered just one other thing about the whole ordeal. He remembered the strange flush of cold from the back of his head that seemed to flow about him... right as the glass disappeared. The looks on the Dursleys' faces had been one of pure terror - well, Dudley was understandable... he ended up in a snake cage...

Harry lay down."No use worrying about it now, nothing I can do about it anyway.." he said to himself aloud, rolling over and fiddling with his lead soldiers.

_**BOOM!**_

Harry sat bolt upright, cursing as he smacked his head on the stairs above.

_**BOOM!**_

The whole house seemed to shudder, and Harry looked out the vent cover on the cupboard door. He could see someone's head above the doorway - at least, he could see a helmet. Uncle Vernon rounded the corner, bellowing oaths.

**_CRASH!_**

The door shattered - didn't give way, just shattered. Vernon stopped dead in his tracks, and a small-to-midsize armored figure stepped through the splinters; a short, wicked-looking rifle in its' hands. "_Dursley?"_ a metallic, rasping, sinister voice asked.

"Yes?" Vernon stuttered, too terrified for belligerence.

_"Bring Harry Potter to me. **Now.**"_ the person ordered, the last word pronounced with the ring of absolute authority and the air of someone used to not being questioned. And indeed, they weren't. Vernon couldn't open the cupboard door fast enough, yanking Harry out of the cupboard and fairly well tossing him to the stranger - who caught him practically effortlessly, and set him on his feet. The helmet turned towards him, the black visor allowing no hint of an expression to escape it. "_Mister Potter, back out the door." _Harry obeyed, stepping back into the porch. The stranger stepped back with them, brandishing a short stick in place of the rifle now."_Reparo!"_ and a flick later, and Harry was goggling at the repaired door.

"How did you do that?" he asked incredulously.

"_You'll find out shortly enough, Mister Potter. Now, we've got to find a place to stay."_

"Who are you?"

The armored figure turned away from the door, and takes Harry's hand, pulling him along behind a shrub, withdrawing their strange stick from a compartment on the forearm of their armor.

_"Hold still."_

Harry winced at the sharp rap on the head he received from the stick, and the strangest feeling took him, like a cracked egg poured over his head_. _He grabbed at it - and froze, as he could no longer see his hands.

_"_What have you done to me?" he asked in a whisper, terrified.

_"Made you un-seeable, for the time being. It's a lot easier than a full-armored super troop dragging around a scrawny eleven year old, you've got to admit. Less cops involved, and that would be very... messy. At least for them, not so much for me. Now, come on, I have a lot to tell you and not a lot of time in which to get it done, so let's get out of here, shall we?" _The stranger stated in a cheerfully detached voice, and somehow found Harry to pick him up in both arms, holding him like a much smaller child. Harry hid his face in an armored shoulder, the wind before them mounting as the trooper sped up to full speed, eating up a kilometer in less than a minute and a half. Before he knew it, they arrived in the lee of an abandoned warehouse.

_"Luuucy, I'm hoooome..."_ the trooper said, then snorted. "_Made a mess of the place, she did..."_

Harry was set on his feet, and he looked about - he didn't recognize the area they were in, but it had the seedy, unsafe feel of a factory district.

_"Hey, Harry, if you don't mind getting your behind in here..." _

Harry turned, and saw the trooper standing next to the door, giving every air of a tapping foot while being absolutely immobile. He trudged up to the entrance, and went through, eyes barely adjusted to the darkness before light flooded in from apparently nowhere - first from two lamps on the collarbone-area of the trooper's armor, and then from a massive patch of bluebell flames that appeared from nowhere at the flick of the strange stick. Harry jumped back, away from the flames - but felt no heat coming from them. He hesitantly walked up to it, but feeling no heat, summons a bit of courage - and plunges his hand into it, half expecting it to instantly melt away. But he felt no harm, and looked back wonderingly, and the trooper chuckled.

_"Teach you how to do that someday? Certainly. Have to. But now, children, it's story time. Come and have a seat."_

The trooper dropped cross-legged to the floor, patting a spot in front of them. Harry walked over, and sat in the indicated place.

_"First, yes, I do have a lot of explaining to do. I'll get to that in due time. I'm going to start with a little story." _The trooper began.

_"Once upon a time - actually, it was just about forty years ago - there was a young boy in an orphanage. He was funny and charismatic when he wanted to be, but sadistic and cruel by nature. He should have ended up in an asylum - but he was special. A kindly old man, a teacher from a prestigious school, was chosen to deliver an invitation to the school to the boy. He did so, arriving in the orphanage with no doubt whatsoever that the child would become a normal student. But the orphanage owner liked to tell stories, you see... she told the kindly old man of strange happenings, things that happened around him... evil things that she knew he'd done but just could not prove."_

Harry fidgeted, thinking of the vanishing glass, but the trooper went on in the same soft, expressive storytelling voice.

_"The man thanked her, and tricked her into thinking he could go up to see the boy - for he was special, as well. She showed him, and the man spoke with the boy. He made him admit and reverse what of his actions he could through the use of his power. The boy went to school, but the man never stopped keeping an eye on him. And he was right to, for while the boy was winning school awards left and right, and bending the other teachers around his little finger, the old man was always the only one who saw straight through him. He knew of his dark rituals and secret researches, knew of his gathering of like-minded students... but, in his foolishness, he allowed his predilection to believe the best about people to stay his hand from breaking it at the root."_

_"This one decision changed the world - my world, your world, _our _world - forever."_

_"The boy became a man, and the man became older. The younger built his powerbase and began secretly performing intensely dark rituals, murdering innocents, and causing general mayhem. The whole of our world feared him, and grew into a state of terror."_

_"The older discovered this, and built a competing group to help fight him. They made progress, but the younger nearly won the war... until he made a truly fatal error. For you see, a young couple was fighting on the side of the older man, and was becoming an intense thorn in the side of the younger man's forces, as both the husband and the wife were fierce warriors. But something unexpected happened - they had a baby. Later that year, a prophecy was made by a young woman in a dusty bar, and someone overheard it who shouldn't've. The prophecy pertained to the couple and their baby, so the young man went into action. One frosty October night, the man personally lead an attack upon their house."_

_ "The father died, trying to protect his wife and son, but he was no match, for he was unarmed."_

Harry felt an unnatural chill down his spine, and his nightmares of a green flash came to his mind.

_"The wife and mother begged for her son to be spared, but that was the man's objective. He tried to get her to move, to give him up, but she refused, so he killed her."_

A woman's scream blew through his mental ears, green flashing before his eyes.

_"So the man turned to the son, who had done no wrong, who was as innocent and pure as the driven snow. He raised his weapon, and tried to kill him as well. But the son's mother's sacrifice had given the son a power all his own, and the man's own power rebounded on him, killing him on the spot. But he was not dead, nor was he living - he was less than the meanest ghost, fleeing his body and the scene. The son was soon found among the wreckage of the house, alive. He was brought to live with his relatives, in the hopes that his blood bond with them would save him, should the man return."_

Harry looked up in shock, and the trooper nodded."_That story is the story of how your parents died, Harry... but you have the same power as they, the same power as both men. That power is, literally, magic."_

_"You're a wizard, Harry."  
_


	4. Chapter 4: Mysteries

Disclaimer: I own nothing but my OCs and plot. Everything else goes to the Rowling-meister.

**Title: A Different Kind of Schooling**

**Rating: T**

**Pairings:** None foreseen, other than what is obvious

**Author:** Jaing

**_Chapter 4: Mysteries_**

Harry stared at that visor in shock.

**_"_**A wizard? Are you mad?" he asked incredulously. The trooper cocked their head.

_"The door, Harry. How would you explain that, except for magic?"_

"I don't know, some sort of Trek replicator, maybe? Little microscopic robots?" he said, reaching for an explanation.

_"Harry, please. Don't insult my intelligence like that. You know I was telling the truth about your parents - the look you had on your face proves you remember, if only a little, thank God."_

**"**But how do you know all this?"

_"Well... another story goes with that, and it's stranger than the one I already told you - and it's also unnecessary. Some time soon I'll tell you, but right now you don't need to know. The important part is that you are the pin upon which a large number of events hinge. On one side of the razor, there is happiness and a return to a watchful, more knowledgeable prosperity. On the other -" _the trooper shrugged expressively "_Death. Destruction. Families torn, buildings and towns annihilated, the world..."_ For a moment, the trooper goes silent, struggling for words."_Burning. That's all I can really describe it as."_

"Why me...? If I'm so important, why was I left with the Dursleys? Surely your kind would protect me, right?" Harry muttered.

_"Harry, you've forgotten already... remember what I said about blood bonds?"_ The trooper said. Harry nodded.

_"__That's why you were left with those... people. __They are your family - your aunt shares your mother's blood. Your blood. That's where the protection from the man - whose name, by the way, is Tom Riddle, though he goes by Lord Voldemort - resides. While you stay at their house willingly and they willingly keep you, you are invincible."_

"Then why the bloody hell did you take me away?" Harry burst.

_"Simply put, there are some things a fancy shield can't do - like teach you how to look out for yourself. And, let's face it, you hate them. That ass for a cousin you've got is unfit to be called civilized. Your uncle beats you mercilessly, and you can't fight back. Admittedly, you know how to run, and to hide. I, on the other hand, will teach you to stand, and to fight. To fade away when you must retreat, and to strike like lightning when the opportunity presents itself."_

Harry started to speak, but the trooper raised a hand.

_"One day, very soon, you'll meet that man again. But when you do..." _a low, dark chuckle reverberated off the walls, similar to something a certain more well-known Dark Lord would have movie-managed..." _I you want to be able to hand him his ass so hard he'll _stay_ dead for a few more years before poking his nose out again."_

"How? I don't know how to do magic, and I don't have your stick thingy -"

_"A wand."_

"Fine, a wand. I don't have fancy armor like yours, or a gun. Like you said, I've never learned how to fight -"

_"I also said I'd teach you that."_

Harry growled."You did. But why me? I'm sure there are other wizards out there more powerful than I am who could help you a lot more easily."

_"There are certainly _older _wizards, yes. But the why you is easy - Voldemort marked you as his equal. That mark on your forehead is proof of it. Prophecies don't come along often, but when they do, it's best to listen to them; and part of yours is 'Neither can live while the other survives.' One of you must kill the other."_

"But-"

_"No buts. I'm sorry. I know you're young and you really shouldn't be having to worry about this - hell, if everything were as it should be, I wouldn't even be here for another thirteen years, born in a little hospital in Minot, North Dakota, back in the states. As it is, however, I am here, and I figure it's for a good reason. It has to be to train you, to change that horrible future, divert to course of time. Maybe it's presumptuous and arrogant of me to think I can, but damned if I'm going to stand by and let the world die."_

Harry paused mid-question-formation, then changed it."You're from the future? Magic again?"

A nod. _"Magic again, but different. No, I did not use a Time Travel spell... and that's part of the story that you don't need to know quite yet."_

The trooper stood, drawing up to full height. Their head didn't seem to move, but Harry got the impression that they were seeing everything at once.

_"I am going to train you, Harry. You are _not_ going to like it. I'm going to run you until neither of us can get up. You're going to go farther, faster, and on less air than anyone else on the planet. You're going swim until you can cross the Channel with ease. I'm going to teach you how to fight - we'll start with hand-to-hand, and when you're able to tie your average black belt into a pretzel we will move on to firearms. Real, powder-spewing cartridge arms. When you ca_n _take a bird out of a tree, taking off only his head, at four hundred meters, we will m__ove on to magitech weapons like mine. I will teach you how to fly, how to set a charge, how to survive anywhere from the highest tundra to the driest desert to the deepest rainforest and jungle. How to properly breach and clear, to knot a rope, to rappel, to parachute. How to fight with anything from your hands to a blade to the biggest honking space cannon you've ever seen. And only after you know all that discipline, will I teach you how to harness that power within you, that magic."_

_"You are going to hate me. But I will do what I was good at in my own time-period __- training under-exercised civilians into unstoppable forces of nature. I will make you into a Guardian, like myself. You will receive the augmentation package, as soon as I can recreate it. It will let you jump higher, run faster, take more punishment, and think faster than any non-guardian human on the planet."_

The trooper turned, visor facing him, and he knew they were looking directly at him."_But by the time I am done, you truly will be humanity's best hope. Your mission, should you choose to accept, is to save the world, and I will help you to do it as best I can, up to and including laying down my life for you." _the voice said softly.****

The switch from hard-edged drill-sergeant to the soft plea spun Harry off guard, and he drew a breath."And if I choose not to?" he asked carefully, and for the first time the trooper's body language was anything but straight and stiff, shoulders slumping.

_"Then the world will be doomed to repeat its mistakes. And I'll have to experience dying again and try again next time."_

This decided Harry. He drew himself up, and looked into that visor."Teach me." he said, quietly but firmly.

The trooper drew to full height again, shoulders set."_I shall."_

"But I want to know one thing." Harry asked.

_"Go for it."_

"Who are you?"

The trooper held still for a short bit, and for a moment Harry thought they would refuse to let him know. Then an armored hand disengaged the helmet's environment seals, lifting it free. Black-red hair spilled out of it, coming to a shaggy, curly shoulder length, and gray eyes pierced green ones, a scar adorning one of the trooper's eyebrows, stretching from just above the brow to the top of the temple, making a thin, indented line.

"My name is Kayleigh Sommers, Guardian, Light Brigade, Dumbledore's Army."


End file.
